Officer Miguel Moreno died at 11:11 this morning from a gunshot wound he sustained as part of a shootout, yesterday, just north of downtown.
Moreno, 32, and his partner Julio Cavazos, 36, were patrolling the area around San Antonio College yesterday due to a spike in car burglaries in the area. When they noticed a car on Evergreen Street that appeared to have been burglarized, they got out to investigate, and that's when one of two men who were approaching them opened fire.
At a news briefing this morning, McManus said Moreno was shot in the head. Cavazos is in critical condition but is expected to survive.
McManus says the gunman was shot once in the buttocks by Officer Cavazos, but it is uncertain whether the wound to the head that killed him was fired by the officer or was self inflicted.
"This kind of slams you in the side of the head about how dangerous this job can be, and how great a job these officers do in the face of that," he said.
He said detectives still know little about why the man opened fire on the officers. He is believed to be from Louisiana, but his name has not been determined. McManus says the gunman appeared to have little to do with the man who appeared to be walking with him, and detectives are uncertain whether they were even together.
The chief said he addressed his officers last night about the incident.
"I told them to be careful when you approach someone," he said. "Approaching someone 999 times out of a thousand it will be okay, but you never know when will be that thousandth time when it will go bad."
He says there are 'no lessons to be learned' in this case and that both officers did their jobs properly.
"I am at a loss for words to describe what a tragedy this is," he said.